1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to the field of creating, displaying and processing email. More specifically, the present invention provides an improved method and system for preventing spam email from reaching an email receiver's inbox.
2. Description of the Related Art
Computer networks are pervasive and have become a part of everyday life. They are used by individuals, companies, and other entities as a means for storing, retrieving, delivering, and displaying information of all kinds. Networks enable users to connect to websites, internal networks, internet-based applications, and each other via a myriad of devices including desktop computers, mobile phones, smart phones, and tablet devices, to name a few.
A website is a good example of the use of networks. Users can connect to a website of a content provider via, for example an internet connection, and gain access to all of the information made available by the content provider. Frequently the content provider may be using the website to advertise goods and/or services it (or a person or entity contracting with the content provider) provides to users, and in doing so, the content provider may want to provide identification information (address, telephone numbers, email addresses, etc.) so that a user may follow up, after viewing the website, to connect with the content provider (for the person or entity contracting with the content provider to advertise their goods/services) to ask questions and/or make a purchase.
A problem exists, however, with providing this kind of identification information via a website or other network location. Malicious users, e.g. spammers, frequently “harvest” identification information, particularly email addresses, from such locations and then use the email addresses to send unsolicited offers, advertisements, or other types of spam to the harvested email addresses. The malicious users typically employ software applications called “web robots” or, more simply, “bots” or “spambots,” to automatically perform the harvesting function. The spambots can run twenty four hours a day with little or no human intervention and simply troll the web hour after hour collecting email addresses and other identification information useful to the spamming community. This practice results massive administrative problems for persons whose identification information has been obtained in this way and is very costly to them in terms of both time and money.
The current best practice for dealing with this situation is for the website/content provider to employ a challenge-response system which requires some form of human input for one to be given access to the identification information. A CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart) program is an example of one such system, which provides a “test” that is, in theory, simple for a human to solve but difficult for a computer to solve. Typically, for example, a CAPTCHA system might present a user with a distorted image of words and ask the user to type the words into an answer box. While such a system is moderately successful, it is burdensome for the user, particularly as spambots are programmed to try to identify the wording in spite of the distortion. The distortion used has become more pronounced, making it more difficult not only for the spambots to identify the text, but also for the human user.
What is needed, then, is a system and method enabling the safe display of identification information, such as email addresses, on websites and other network-accessible locations that is easy to use, and minimizes or halts completely the need for persons legitimately accessing the information to perform additional steps to safely gain this identification information.